I Know What You Did Last, Summer

Summer Sanders has stood on a starting block, wearing a red, white, and blue Speedo, and then on an Olympic podium to have a gold medal draped around her neck. She collected another gold, a silver, and a bronze medal. A decade later, she crossed the finish line of the New York City Marathon in 3:17. And 11 years after that, this past April, she finished Boston in 3:33. She's been told "You're fired!" by Donald Trump on Celebrity Apprentice and has interviewed speed skater Apolo Anton Ohno and first lady Michelle Obama for TV networks.

Today, though, Sanders is just an average 41-year-old mom, trying to get her kids to do something that isn't especially interesting to them anymore. Namely, to keep running through The Color Run, a 5-K in late August in Salt Lake City. Skye, her 7-year-old daughter, didn't heed her mom's "start slowly" instructions and is, around the two-mile mark, dragging. Meanwhile Spider, her 5-year-old son, has lost interest. "Can you just run to that stoplight, Spidey?" Sanders asks.

"All right, Mom," he says, and sprints off on his spindly legs. For about five steps. Then he's back to his geriatric-like walk. "I just can't," he says, voice full of drama. "I'm soooo tired."

"Come on, let's just get up to that corner," she says, pointing to a spot about 100 feet ahead.

"Oh, that one?" he asks. "No problem." And he flies off again.

Sanders smiles and falls in behind Spider; Jada, her 8-year-old niece; and her husband, Erik Schlopy, who is holding Skye's hand to coax her along.

These 3.1 miles may be the physically easiest and mentally most challenging miles Sanders has ever run. And she's run her share. She's now preparing for the Runner's World Half & Festival, where she'll run the hat trick (5-K, 10-K, and half-marathon over two days), and the New York City Marathon on November 3. Sanders, who has been a runner since 1993, is coming off a minor, non-running-related injury, but isn't overly concerned about a compressed training schedule. "When you put 20 years of consistent work into a sport, your body remembers it quickly," she says, "I can't run a marathon tomorrow, but I'll be fine."

Born in Roseville, California, Sanders swam her first competitive laps at age 4 because she wanted to keep up with her older brother. Even though she aspired to be a sprinter, she came to realize her body held "zero fast-twitch muscles," so she settled into the nickname "One Speed" and her forte: the 200-meter butterfly and 200- and 400-meter individual medleys. Over the course of her 18-year career, she racked up eight national championships, 10 NCAA championships (while swimming for Stanford for just two years), and four Olympic medals in 1992 in Barcelona, where she was the most decorated U.S. swimmer of the Games.

In December 1993, she traded her goggles for two things: a microphone and a pair of running shoes. While finishing up at Stanford, she began a career as a television commentator and started running with friends around campus. "I love running because I can feel myself sweat, which was such a novel, amazing feeling I didn't get in the pool," she says. "Plus, I can talk. I used to chat with my teammates during kicking sets, and my coach would get mad and tell me I wasn't working hard enough." Finally, trading a black line on the bottom of the pool for a view of the colorful world was delicious. "I feel as though I can remember almost every step of every marathon," says Sanders, who has run the New York City Marathon twice, the Chicago Marathon, as well as the Boston Marathon last spring.

Sanders, a natural in front of the camera, soon found herself talking with a variety of people; she cohosted NBA Inside Stuff for eight years, has been a correspondent for the Today show and Good Morning America, and has held a variety of other gigs from Nickelodeon's Figure ItOut to The Rachael Ray Show to Skating with Celebrities. Whether she was in France or Fargo, her running shoes always traveled with her. "Running is how I clear my head and find my center again," she says.

Running helped her process a divorce from her first husband, Olympic swimmer Mark Henderson, and it's been a constant through her second marriage to Schlopy, an Olympic skier. The pair married in 2005, and Sanders moved to Park City, Utah, so he could continue competing. He retired in 2008, shortly after the birth of Spider, who is named after alpine legend Spider Sabich.

Meanwhile, Sanders started her own TV production company with a colleague, which puts her on the road, on average, one to two days a week. Plus, she has to put in her miles to train for her fall races. (And there's no rest for the weary: She'll be running Boston again in 2014.) Although she has run 26.2 through New York's five boroughs twice before, this time, her life is much different. In addition to working and training, she and Schlopy have soccer games and karate practices to attend, school lunches to make, piles of laundry to deal with, bloody knees to bandage, iPad usage to monitor, and all the other daily, mundane tasks parenting young children requires. (Schlopy's family lives nearby, and Sanders's parents visit often; they have "several wonderful babysitters.") "There is no such thing as balance or having it all," she says with a laugh. "I tell our kids all the time, we are doing the best we can."
Despite their last, seemingly interminable mile, Skye and Spider cross the finish line, and dance and launch color packets with so much energy, it seems like they could run another race. Spider is so enthusiastic, he accidentally throws a full packet of purple color into Sanders's mouth. She spends five minutes spitting and rinsing and convincing Spider, who apologizes repeatedly, that she's okay.

Sanders may not have it all, but she does have a healthy lifestyle, ambitious goals, an active career, and a thriving family, which leads one to believe she is doing something right. Here are five of the guiding principles in her mother-runner life.

Goal = NecessaryIn high school, Sanders plastered her swimming time goals on her bathroom mirror; in college, she posted them next to her bed. "I could tell you those numbers in my sleep," she says. Today, she approaches a race on pavement in a similar fashion to how she'd treat one in the pool. "If you write something down on paper, it becomes an actual goal," she says. "Before you write it down, it's a thought, a dream that may or may not get done."

When Sanders commits to a race, she logs her training runs and aims for as much consistency as her hectic schedule allows. Each race is an opportunity to learn something—and, more important, set a future goal—even if it's not time-related. The goal of Chicago was to qualify for Boston. Check. At the finish of Boston, she wasn't focused on the clock (3:33), but how weak her legs felt. "I wasn't as strong as I wanted to be," she says. "I had to back off pace because it was just too painful." Once she physically recovered from the effort and mentally processed the bombings—she was evacuated from her hotel on Boylston after the explosions—she told her running girlfriends she wanted to get stronger. So they now go to Park City's track for speedwork and have built intervals into runs when they can't make it there. She's planning double sessions—a long run in the morning, a short run at night, or vice versa—to get her legs more accustomed to running tired, and she plans on incorporating structured strength training. "These days, my strength work is carrying both kids up the stairs at once," she says.

She'll have to wait and see if her plan works out, but the simple, methodical process of working toward a goal is for now reward enough.

Respect the Four-Day RuleWhen Sanders travels, she tries to limit how many days she is away from her family. "On my fourth day away, I'm not smiling quite as much, and I just feel like I need to be home," she says.

This four-day rule is one of a handful of unique-to-her-lifestyle principles that Sanders has created to make her life run as smoothly as possible. Consistency is her governing principle for parenting. Whether Sanders has been gone for four days or four hours, she doesn't try to compensate for her absence. "I don't walk in the door and let things slide just because I've been gone," she says. "'No, you don't get to eat extra candy or watch more TV.' I don't bring mom guilt home."

Through trial and error, she's learned her basic ingredients for her marathon success: "I need distance, sleep, and speedwork," she says, "Probably in that order." She rarely runs at the crack of dawn because sleep is so sacred, and she also avoids too many miles in crazy cold weather, which can be hard in Park City, where water in her hydration belt is often colder, postrun, than it was prerun. "Lack of sleep and cold weather just break me down," says Sanders, who hits the treadmill when it's frigid. "Respecting that keeps me healthy."

Another factor that keeps her running: listening to her body and taking a break when needed. While training for Chicago in 2012, she hopped on a plane a few hours after finishing an 18-miler. "I felt my hamstring go into a tight ball on the flight," she says. "I realize now that running and flying are a horrible cocktail for me." She later made the decision to skip her next long run, a 20-miler, hoping the rest would serve her better (it did; the hamstring was healed by race day). "I try to be proactive," she says. "Anytime I feel something tugging, I try to figure it out."

Find the CracksOn the Saturday that Sanders ran The Color Run, she also made sure all the details for her upcoming shoot for ESPNW at the U.S. Open were nailed down, dealt with some stubborn yellow coloring in her hair from the 5-K that wouldn't budge (a trip to the store for Dawn and baking soda and multiple washings did the trick), texted around to find a babysitter so she and Erik could have a date night (sushi and We Are the Millers) that evening, and carried her phone around all day.

"My friends and I joke that we work in the cracks," Sanders says. She laughs, but being flexible with her schedule and mentality is an effective strategy for fitting in work—and workouts.

The biggest cracks are when she travels. "When I am away from home, I maximize every moment I have," she says. Flights aren't for catching up on last year's movies; they're for working. And early mornings, even if it's 3 a.m. Park City time, are for running. "It's a lot easier to get up and run crazy early when I'm alone and can chill at the end of the day," she says. "When I'm home, I need to be an engaged, active, positive parent at the end of the day, which takes a lot of energy."
At home, Wednesdays typically have cracks for her long run. "I feel pretty guilty when I have to head out for 2.5 hours on the weekend, and then come home and I'm so tired," she says. "My schedule is flexible, so I plan my long runs for Wednesday." On other days, she usually heads out for a run after the kids are on the school bus. ("I make sure I'm dressed and ready to go when it pulls up.") Plan B: An elliptical machine, adorned with a well-worn heart-rate-monitor strap over one of the handles, lives in their garage. "I'm not that married to getting in the exact workout," she says. "I get in cardio, and trust that it'll be fine. I cherish my days off." Other times, she'll meet her family at the town pool for a 15-minute cooldown after a run—the perfect amount of swimming for her these days. "Swimming brings my spine and hips back to alignment," she says. "After a short swim, I feel strong again."

Eat (Mostly) WellSanders coaxes the kids into the outdoor shower in their backyard after The Color Run (they were intent on looking like Smurfs for the entire day), then sets about making lunch. It's got to be quick, as the kids are hungry and close to melting down. She boils a pot of water, pulls out two boxes of Annie's Mac and Cheese, and starts slicing bananas and apples, then adds in grapes to make quick, mini fruit salads. They take their places at the counter, and she asks them what they want to drink. Italian soda, with silly straws, of course.

The healthy meal and indulgent drinks nod to Sanders's perspective when it comes to eating: fresh first, everything in moderation, don't sweat it too much. "Not everything I put in my mouth is the purest form of fuel," she says. "I know that, but I don't obsess about it." She stocks her fridge with cut-up peppers, cucumbers, celery, apples, and other produce so she reaches for it first when hunger hits, and hopes she's setting a good example for her kids. "I want them to go to the fridge and get something that's fresh, not to the pantry to get something in a package."

On the road, her savior is steamed broccoli. During the 2004 NBA Finals, when she was on the road nonstop, she got so tired of big dinners at restaurants, her meal one night was the biggest plate of steamed broccoli room service could manage. At home, spaghetti with her homemade sauce and Erik's salmon with garlic-ginger BBQ sauce are favorites.

"I still love carbs, and my kids need carbs," she says. A meal usually ends with a small or shared dessert: "I have a big bag of M&M's in the pantry, and I have a scoop after lunch. That's my treat."

Her nutrition is a little more random on the run. She will eat almost any kind of fuel—provided it's there. Before a long run for Boston, she stocked up on a variety of products and stored them in the pantry. She went to grab them, and they were gone. Schlopy had taken them for a bike ride. Plan B: a chocolate-chip granola bar. "All moms get it," she says. "Sometimes, you have to work with what you have."

Embrace the PainThe highlight of Sanders's summer last year was going to be the London Olympics. She was commentating on her sixth Games, her family was coming along, and the trip was going to start with her participating in the Torch Run. Two nights before her flight, however, she woke up in the middle of the night in excruciating pain; the next morning Erik took her to the ER. In a span of four days, she had an appendectomy, flew to London, and ran 370 yards with the Olympic torch. "I was not going to be denied that opportunity," she says. "But I was in a lot of pain. Actually, it was more just discomfort."

Once an Olympian, always an Olympian. Sanders doesn't allow herself to walk in races, except at aid stations. "At the end of a marathon, it's going to hurt whether you're speeding up or slowing down," she says. "You may as well push." She wonders if she has a just-for-fun marathon in her. "I don't know if I can do it," she says. "I'm just so competitive."

Even when she tries to tone it down, her fast friends veto that idea. At a track workout of 8 x 800 meters, Sanders was ready to call it a day after the sixth repeat. Laurie, her speedy pal who owns a 2:50 marathon PR (1999), told her those last two 800s weren't optional. So Sanders pounded them out. "They weren't actually all that bad," Sanders says. "And it makes all the difference knowing that I finished and pushed myself a little farther than I really wanted to go."

dimity mcdowellDimity McDowell is a Colorado-based freelance writer who specializes in fitness.

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